Court revels, 1485-1559 (review)

Reviews 227 in many others, the anthology is a model of its kind. Judith Weiss Robinson College University of Cambridge1 Streitberger, W. R., Court revels, 1485-1559 (Studies in early English drama, 3) Toronto/Buffalo/London, University of Toronto Press, 1994; cloth; pp. xvi, 454; R.R.P CAN$75.00. This work is the result of nearly two decades of painstaking research in which Dr Streitberger has combed the archives in Britain and tbe U S A for material on the revels in England. The result is a book which will be a reliable source for future generations of scholars who are concerned with the public entertainments of all sorts with which the English court amused itself. The extent to which such entertainments were open to the ordinary royal subject that is the nature of the audience, although touched upon, is not explored. The extent of tbe role of suchrevelsin creating a mystique as part of the creation of a royal image in the mind of the people cannot therefore bejudged. Dr Streitberger gives a full chronological calendar of all the revels, spectacles, plays, pageants, tournaments, and entertainments. The appendices list the playing companies at court, the abbots and lords of misrule, and the officers of the revels and tents. The text provides a description of the entertainments, where w e have details of them, and such information as survives about who was responsible for tbe concepts and realization of the performances and then costs. Streitberger is duly cautious about these details, pointing out the various departments involved in the provision of materials and the gaps in the sources. The author points to tbefluidityof form of such entertainments and the frequent integration of different elements in a single entertainment; although, he does not consider the role which the banquet itself often a major work of art, involving considerable symbolism, played in providing a frame for many plays or pageants. His appreciation of the role of court etiquette and household structure in ordering entertainments is patchy. Although he has read the Ordinances of the Household, he does not give much weight to the wider changes which took place in the formal court structure, and his discussion of the role of the various officers, necessarily brief, is a trifle simplistic. So also is his belief that the development of a visible royal 228 Reviews bureaucratic office in the 1540s, when a large number of such offices appeared simultaneously, was necessarily an improvement on the previous arrangements. H e makes a valiant effort to sort out the confusing prosopographical details of the minor bureaucracy on the basis of rather limited sources. Streitberger's background in English literature probably explains the curious absence of a wider context for his account of the English court. Apart from the briefest of references to the Burgundian court at the beginning, and the occasional allusion to Italian style, there is no attempt to see where the early Tudor court entertainmentsfittedinto a wider European pattern, whether they were original or imitative, and where the influences may have come from. Since secondary works which describe festivities at the famous fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian courts, as well as the ingenious devices used in other pageants and plays put on in tbe great cities, are fairly abundant the absence of this comparison, which would have added great depth to the study, is to be regretted. That the court knew, emulated, and attempted to outshine continental courts is surely indicated by the fact that in a single mask, tbe styles of Genoa could be distinguished from the styles of Milan. Whether it also implied a degree of cultural cringe, may be debated. That the English monarchs, when not effectively bankrupt employed large numbers of foreign artisans at all levels, implies that ideas travelled with the people. The field of the Cloth of Gold, which is, perhaps surprisingly, not considered in great detail, was the moment when direct comparison was possible and when Henry VIII sought to impress Europe with English sophistication in ah forms of sport and revel. This is primarily an institutional account, more interested in the mechanics of the productions than the politics which was undoubtedly involved in many...